If you ‘re looking for some great home pictures this is the right place.

I have been fortunate to be in a position to photograph some really amazing properties in Albuquerque, NM.  Some have the most amazing Spanish hacienda feel graced with Santa Fe style vigas and massive cottonwoods. Still others are Mediterranean style homes.

It doesn’t take a half million dollar home to make a great shoot. I have photographed homes at $100k that were staged right. Two components go into making great pictures:

1. Staging
2. Lighting

Staging takes a willingness to unclutter and make the most of the resources at hand. Some sellers hire staging companies to make their homes pop. Many agents have light staging items to give a home a lived in feel. Regardless the pictures will never look great unless the home can be “warmed-up.” Plants, candles and anything that will engage the senses should be used throughout the home.

There are only a few ways to deal with the issues that arise from light and glare pouring through the windows. Even the most expensive cameras cannot just shoot through a daytime window without using some detailed photography tricks. The best idea is to shoot a home at sunset when the light is even outside and inside. Anyone can do this making the pictures look their best. Professional photographers can use high definition and enfusing photography techniques.

Homes of New Mexico

So click here to see my portfolio and enjoy many of the New Mexican properties that are waiting for a new owner.

How to Sell in a Buyer’s Market

By Andrew Hill @ http://NewHomes.Move.com/

For the past few years, everyone has been repeating “it’s a buyer’s market; it’s a buyer’s market.” And to many trying to sell their home this seems to be a major obstacle. But it doesn’t have to be that way. By following these tips you can substantially improve the chances of selling your home, no matter the market conditions.

For starters, you need to ask yourself how many personal touches you will display. The idea behind home staging is to make the home appear comfortable and welcoming. This aids the buyers’ attempts to imagine themselves living there. Be careful not to make your interior as bare as a hospital ward, nor cluttered with family mementos. You should aim to find a balance that allows the people to connect with the home. An appropriate number of pictures that create a vignette of your family life is a good example to follow.

If you smoke, have pets, or have a house that simply doesn’t smell fresh, this is a serious obstacle to selling your home. When touring a home, smell is just as important as sight. If you have a beautiful mansion but it smells like garbage, no one will want to purchase it. In order to cover up these smells, consider replacing your carpet and/or adding a fresh coat of paint. These solutions not only help to disguise unpleasant odors, but they also enhance the new home illusion. Oftentimes, these are also some of the most cost effective solutions to brightening up your home.

Another key ingredient to the illusion of “livability” is the absence of pets and family. If these buyers are going to try to imagine themselves living in your home, then they need to be completely immersed in their imagination. Therefore, it’s important for you, your family, and any pets to be kept out of the house during the showing. If your buyers are serious about buying the home, chances are they aren’t imagining your family living there. It’s important not to ruin this illusion.

Finally, one of the best things you can do to have a good shot at selling your home is to hire an agent! Realtors are the experts in this field and their knowledge/skills will not be a misplaced investment. Furthermore, buyers are much more likely to trust a home that is being sold by a Realtor than a home with the “for sale by owner” sign.

As you can see, there are many things you can do to improve the odds of selling your home. For more real estate tips and advice, be sure to contact, Jim Gross!

1. Every month, more than 80,000 new families see their homes enter into foreclosure. As of 2011. Short sales have become an attractive option due to less adverse credit impact on sellers. However short sales can take a very long time to complete.

2. In New Mexico it is possible that sellers may still owe the difference between final sales price and what they owed on the mortgage. In both foreclosures and short sales it is possible that the lender may issue a deficiency judgment against the mortgagor. Further, if they forgive this debt it is possible the IRS may tax the forgiven amount as income.

3. Banks are wising up… they are finally beginning to see that foreclosures are bad and short sales are better. Foreclosures hurt everyone. They often leave a stream of unpaid bills, destroyed credit and unmarketable homes. Banks realize that they stand a better chance of a sale closer to market price while the owner is still living in the property.

4. Foreclosures can be purchased far below market value. There are deals available in all market types at this point – distressed and non-distressed. The distressed ones often come at a high price with unpaid liens and damage that may need extensive repair. Foreclosures can save you thousands, but have a professional check it out and be prepared to spend time and money on it.

5. Albuquerque foreclosures are easy to find on the Southwest MLS. Yes they are easy to find. Most search engines today allow you to specify for the status. You may however need to verify if it is “bank owned” or a short sale. The negotiation process is very different. Short sales can take from 3 months up to a year to complete.

6. What can you negotiate with foreclosures. Generally, just the price. Take your best shot because foreclosures are sold “As-Is” in New Mexico. Bring your own inspector. Also, a professional real estate agent is really best here. Negotiation, inspections and title search are key to buying a successful foreclosure.

7. Do the math… look for traditional non-distressed properties while looking for foreclosures. Everybody thinks that a foreclosure is a great deal at the beginning. In this market, it is possible to find a move in ready home at well below market value for one reason or another. Do the math to find out which is truly the best deal.

8. Most banks do not include a seller’s disclosure for foreclosures. The sad truth is that NM is not a disclosure state anyway. Other than latent defects sellers are not required to include a disclosure statement. Many real estate firms however require them from their sellers to offer more protection. But you won’t typically see one on a foreclosure since banks know very little about the history of their properties.

9. Multiple offers are common on foreclosures. Banks are going to try to get as close to market value as possible for a home. But if investors see a bargain there may likely be several. Just make your best offer. Banks consider several things in order to determine the “best offer.”

10. Real estate agent services typically are free to buyers. In most markets (including short sales and foreclosures) agent fees are paid by the seller. So why not use a local pro to negotiate and represent your best interest. They know exactly what to look for.

I’ve run across so many listings in Albuquerque that don’t get a second look because of a bad cover shot.  I’m not sure, but I don’t think the owners are trying to go out of their way to not sell their house, but it almost appears that way at times. Why would anyone put together a marketing strategy to sell their house that does not include a killer front cover shot?

As a real estate photographer and broker I now have the ability to see both sides of the fence. I have learned that it’s the big opening shot that motivates buyers to go view a home. It’s the bones and price that ultimately sell it. Many homes have the latter, but will not sell because buyers are never drawn to it in the first place.

So the house does not have great curb appeal. Solution, shoot it at twilight. Everything looks better at twilight. Turn all the lights on, hose down the driveway , put your camera on a tripod and take timed exposures over a 15 minute period while the sun is setting.  Then have a friend who is great in Photoshop combine them for you. I guarantee you my friend, it will get noticed.

The interior shots are no less important however. If you have not hired a professional to use high definition or enfusing (to eliminate lighting and glare issues) then you will want to take them at sunset as well when the light outside is even with the light inside.

What does this mean to you the homeowner? Possibly the difference between a quick sale and no sale. The reason is simple – people tend to judge a book by its cover. Why? Because there are so many books to choose from. If you want yours to stand out then you need to invest in the first thing people will see drawing them in for more.

1. Young people make up a large piece of the market.  According to the National Association of Realtors, the median age of first-time buyers is 28 years, making young people a large portion of home buyers.

2. Renting does not protect you against rising costs.  Landlords pass on the added costs of tax, insurance, utility and maintenance costs to renters

3. Trying to “time the market” can be costly.  since we don’t control interest rates, many families put off buying, waiting for prices to come down. The facts prove that those who play the waiting game most likely will end up losing.

4. Home ownership is a good investment.  Home ownership offers advantages not found in other investments such as the possibility of appreciation in value. Also, you can live in it while it’s working for you.

5. You can’t afford to overlook the tax breaks.  Mortgage interest and property taxes are deductible. These big-ticket items can save you thousands of dollars each year.

6. Money isn’t the only thing to consider.  While cost is important remember that you are also buying a quality of life.

7. Don’t worry about overpaying for the home. Buyers fear with dropping rates that they may overpay, but banks require a current appraisal. If the offer is for more than the appraisal, few banks will loan the money.

8. Many first time homebuyers think they can’t qualify.  Loan products are changing so quickly that even lenders are having trouble keeping up with what qualifies for a loan. Most lenders can give you a step-by-step process to qualify for particular loan products.

9. The cost of a 1% increase in interest may outweigh a home price decrease.  Have a mortgage company compare a 1% increase over current rate to a 5k or 10k decrease in home cost. It may just be that it costs more in the long run to pay the higher interest rate.

10. Real estate agent services typically are free to buyers. In most markets buyer agent fees are paid by the seller. So why not use a local pro to negotiate and represent your best interest. They know exactly what to look for.

So how do you find the best balance between up-front marketing costs and getting good exposure for a home listing? What kind of marketing does it take to make an average home really stand out on the internet? 90% of all home buyers begin their search on the internet, where the average MLS picture size is about 1 inch.

The norm of a particular market will drive where agents and home owners spend their marketing dollars. If you do not hire a professional photographer in New York, more than likely the home may not get a second glance. But in Albuquerque, the industry is just beginning to see the value of spending dollars on the front end and how that can lead to a quick sell, often for a higher price.

In markets like Albuquerque where 75% of homes are photographed by amateurs the door is wide open for a great looking marketing package to be designed making a home garner great interest early in the listing. Generally, great home photos that can control light issues caused by windows and glare take a specialized type of training that only real estate photographers are equipped to handle. The very best high-end professional cameras are completely fooled by the same light issues that fool lower end prosumer cameras. Techniques such as enfusing, bracketing shots and high definition are a few ways that real estate photographers deal with lighting issues that exist in homes.

In this case a photographer may take up to 9 shots of the same picture at various exposure settings, bracket them and then enfuse them in professional software such as Adobe Lightroom. Adjusting for white balance and adding detail typically produces an image that is crystal clear at almost any time of the day.

So, does your home need this kind of marketing? Spend some time on the internet looking over homes that have recently sold, compare to homes that have been sitting and then measure which have better online marketing campaigns. Try to determine what elements the marketing includes such as professional photos, virtual tours, videos, websites, and color brochures.

Picture this house is a new online video series that teaches some of the easy tricks for taking better home pictures. It’s a free training series aimed at anyone interested in learning what it takes to make better images leading to selling real estate more quickly.

Albuquerque real estate photographer and agent Jim Gross has taken the lead role in a national awareness series to help train agents on the best ways to use cameras, post production software and virtual tours to make more effective listings.

Real estate pictures are the single most important factor for the 82% of home buyers starting their online home search. Yet, they are often the most overlooked causing a home to double or even triple the amount of time needed to sell. Even worse, poor pictures can cause multiple price reductions to gain the same attention that professional pictures would have accomplished within the first weeks of listing.

While real estate photographers are worth every penny of investment in the selling of a home, agents that have decided to take their own photos can learn a few skills quickly to make the images brighter, straighter and sharper… leading to more showings.

Picture This House Training Series

Picture This House online video series will launch in March 2012.

How much is the cost of waiting to buy? Is it welcome to pride of ownership or welcome to the jungle, baby! Oh, did you think I meant that renting is like a jungle? Actually, today alot of people think the process of buying is more like a jungle… so you decide for yourself.

Now in today’s market everyone is sitting on a goldmine of cash waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger… right? Reality is that most dads lost their 401k’s in 2001 when the stock market crashed wiping out all dreams of a fat retirement, funding their daughters dream wedding or college education. So for most of us with barely enough to put a low down payment it is vital to take the plunge at the exact right moment.

So when will the market rebound? First the disclaimer, as a New Mexican real estate agent I am bound to tell you that I don’t know anything about anything at all. OK, so while I am not a CPA it does not take a brain to do some simple math that I learned recently at a Jackie Levenworth seminar. Let me show you how and if you are comfortable try it. If not, visit your CPA.  Let’s look at the cost of waiting when interest rates move upwards from 4% to 5%.

Let’s use an example where a buyer is wanting to pay $1,500 principal and interest (P&I) per month. $1,500 monthly P&I ÷ factor x 1,000 = amount of money that can be borrowed (4% interest for 30 years): $1,500 P&I ÷ 4.77 (factor) = $314.46 x 1,000 = $314,465 mortgage amt.

Now if the interest rate creeps up to 5% here is the difference:  $1,500 P&I ÷ 5.37 = $279,329 x 1,000 = $279,329 mortgage amt. This buyer has lost over $35,000 in buying power because of the increase in interest rate.

Now the question in this market for you to think about is what will be the outcome if a recovery comes and both home price and rates start increasing? The one thing that many people agree on is that timing the bottom of one variable is difficult, but both of these work together to determine how much house you can buy. Also there are tax considerations that should be factored into the cost of buying verses renting. These are more complicated and can be easily answered by your tax person.

In all seriousness, if you are waiting for “the bottom” you owe it to yourself to let a mortgage company run some scenarios and see how they figure into what you are qualified to buy. With such a major investment having a few pros on your side may lead to a great buying decision.

As important as quality real estate photography has become to me with homes I sell in Albuquerque, I am generally accepting of bad photos on the MLS, but today was different. Let me tell you why.

I have a client that has requested that I send her homes between 400,000 to 500,000 within Albuquerque. I set her up on a drip system, which also means that I don’t always preview the properties before they are sent to her. Normally, this is a great way to market homes 24/7, right?

Today she wrote and asked me to stop sending her homes via the MLS because all the homes she looked at were “depressing” and she was “worried” that she would not be able to find the right home in her price range. I spent time viewing the eight half million dollar properties she viewed within Albuquerque to find some of the worst pictures I have ever seen for homes in this price range. In fact, they WERE depressing. You would never know if the home was nice as agents shot directly into blown-out (brightly lit) windows creating dark rooms. Crooked pictures, bad angles, insufficient staging, poor color balance and blurry photographs were a few of the other issues with these pictures.

As an agent who started out as a real estate photographer, I did not EVEN have the heart to say to my client something like “it’s just the pictures or I bet it looks better in person.” It was unacceptable to her and reflected on me since the MLS was sending them from me. I said “you are absolutely correct, these homes are substandard…. next!” I promised her I would be more careful about sending her better properties in her price range. Translation – homes with better pictures that don’t insult a high end buyers senses.

So, the take away is this: If you are serious about selling your home or having people even think about viewing the home, either learn to take great photos or find someone who does. In the Albuquerque, New Mexico area… the best real estate photographers charge under $200 including virtual tours, pictures and the works to help market homes. Can you afford not to hire one?

As I see it there are two types of home sellers:

1. Ones that need to sell
2. Ones that don’t

While very basic, this is key information that when combined with knowledge of the neighborhood prices, is extremely helpful to buyers.

Many sellers today are moving through a backwards progression.  (I didn’t even know you could progress backwards… but it seems almost reasonable in this marketplace.) Money is tight, they list their home, miss some payments along the way turning the property into a short sale, and eventually (if they don’t sell it) foreclosure.

Masked by the emotional desire to sell, often they are self confident that their house IS the nicest house on the block. They would be doing you a favor to sell this to you at the list price. Or their reasoning for the price may be more of a financial necessity. Perhaps they have to get $200,000 for their house to pay off the existing mortgage and closing cost.  This can be a deadly negotiation, as it is not rooted whatsoever in the actual value.

If they don’t need to sell that is much more elusive. They may put their house on the market and take it off at will. They may try again in the spring. They are waiting for the right person to come along and knock on their door with a check in hand. As prices of real estate go up, it is a good bet that so will interest rates driving the cost of the home up even higher.

So the take away from this is to try to determine where the price of the home is sitting in the neighborhood. Ask your real estate agent to do a “CMA.” Then try to determine if the seller needs to sell or is simply testing the market. While not always apparent, there are now published sources like the current mortgage on a home as compared to the market value. This will give you
some indication as to why the home may be priced where it is.

Selling a home is no different! You need to work all the networks where buyers are spending time. Good realtors know where buyers are hanging out. One misunderstood fact from sellers is that the agent already has a buyer in their hip pocket ready to buy. This generally is not the case. But realtors know where to find buyers and their agents. They network with them on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. They send out blasts to their offices and hold tours with groups of realtors. They get a buzz going about their new listing. This is why the first few weeks of a listing are so vital to moving the property.

Many don’t do open houses, but that is one way to find a buyer. We try to add one new element each day. In a month that is 30 different sources…  Initially, it is vital to develop great source material. Pictures taken by a realtor generally won’t produce results necessary to sell in this market. Also, every hundred dollars spent with a professional stager will return several times that. The source material and the home need a polished professional look. Virtual tours and professional brochures create quality source material. Secondly, the home needs to be priced right. When a house is first listed it tends to get the most action within the first month. It’s important to use that window to find the right price and bring buyers in:

1. Professional pictures
2. Staging consultation
3. Develop good source material
4. Price home right

These are just a few of the first steps to get you on your way to selling your Albuquerque home. Interview several agents and see who has the most solid system and track record. Are they open to using everything from Craig’s List and Realtor.com to open houses and social media? Do they blog about their listings? How do they reach out to the agent community. The MLS is not enough in this market to guarantee your home sale. Use these initial steps to launch a solid marketing plan to sell your home.

Jim Gross

The world of real estate has finally caught up with other industries offering high-tech professional tools to everybody. First came the ability to find lower fares than a travel agent could online. Then came cameras offering 12 mega pixel resolution, camcorders offering high definition and recording studios in a box for every musician out there with a few hundred bucks. Real estate buyers have been able to use a limited version of the MLS for years. Agents have learned that giving potential buyers much broader access to listing data creates a customer that is savvy and ready to buy. Some of the more advanced searches include the ability to sort preferences, save searches and have homes meeting their exact preferences emailed to them daily to look at online.

At the same time, agents should be able to scan information about the city, schools, crime statistics or just about anything to plug them into the local market… realtime! It’s no more about mailing a relocation packet out of state, now when that right home hits the market through the local MLS, it get’s sent out the same day.

Search Albuquerque Real Estate

So what are the dangers of giving out this much information to buyers. After all, why do they need an agent if they can find the perfect home without ever sending us an email? The same reason it has been for the past fifty years – listing agents represent the seller. Their job is to get the most for the house that they can. As a buyer making an offer directly to the listing agent, do you really want to divulge exactly how much you have been preapproved for before your offer has been accepted? Do you want to go it alone with inspections when renegotiating a few items?

The best strategy, being that generally buyers do not have to pay an agent commission, then is to leverage the power of the internet to search for Albuquerque homes and along the way develop a relationship with an agent that will help you negotiate the best deal.

So, about March I decided to get a real estate license and jump in with both feet. My friends would ask – is real estate any better? I would say, well no, but iPods have not taken over real estate agent jobs yet…

I know there are so many people out there like me wondering can I really make a career change so late in life, YES! Once I got over the fact that I would not play guitar until I retired, I thanked God for all the many great gigs and the opportunity to do what I was so comfortable with.

Time to branch out into a new chapter. I chose to join Keller Williams in Albuquerque. While this business of contracts is enough to make a simple musician’s head spin, the people at KW really make it all worthwhile. They understand and embrace change, growth and support. If I ever had to go back into the workplace, I honestly could not think of a better place to begin. It seems as though the entire company nation-wide is experiencing the same surge of learning new technology, systems and support… all at the same time! There are so many agents posting great tips on how to succeed that I hardly know where to begin.

This is a season of change and a time for growth both personally and professionally. At the end of a long search it’s reassuring to know there are 1,000′s of other people in my company all pulling together to be successful. On days when the economy gets me down, I turn to other realtors and let the successful pros re-energize me (this is a perk that I never had working in the music industry). I see this as a life enriching challenge – finding the passion that I had with music and making a difference in Albuquerque real estate.